Toxic corporate environment - Anonymous employee Harvest Restaurants Employee Review

Friendly employees, good management, good money

Depending on the restaurant, it can get chaotic

-Depending on which restaurant you work at, the people can be very gregarious, teamwork-oriented, witty and fun to work with. -Depending on which restaurant you work at (lower volume with higher check averages is best to make it worth your while), easy work for what the pay is. -Depending on which restaurant you work at, managers can be conscientious and attentive to your work schedule, requests, needs and consider your work/life balance with respect. Other managers, couldn't care less, and are more concerned about pleasing their higher-ups and staying on their good side. No managers are authentically on your side or actually care about your opinions/wellbeing, they care about looking good on paper to corporate.

-Toxic workplace culture that they will move the goalpost on to create excuses for termination towards anyone who isn't sycophantic enough to their liking. -Overly rigid about rules that they colloquially refer to as the "Harvest Standards." Every single employee I worked with consistently complained about how unyielding and myopic these standards were, as corporate would stubbornly refuse to listen to any employee/customer feedback that they didn't agree with. One example being the universal god awful soundtrack that corporate seems to think is infallibly amazing, despite receiving ongoing complaints from paying customers about how it totally ruined the atmosphere for them. Employees would consistently complain as well, about the negative impact it had on their performance. -Most managers and corporate higher-ups have a very apparent god-complex and will haze new employees in order to test their boundaries and see how far they can push them. -Will find any excuse to terminate employees simply because they felt rubbed the wrong way by them. -Certain female supervisors in corporate have a reputation of giving preferential treatment towards employees based on their sex (i.e. being lenient on males they find attractive, while being punitive and overly critical towards females they are intimidated by). -They will abuse power and terminate employees without any prior warning, simply because they decided they didn't like the person, even if the employees were revered by customers and were providing excellent service and attendance at their job. -Don't follow OSHA standards and refuse to allow you a snack break at any time during double shifts (10+ hours). Only allow pre-shift "family meal" -- which you are required to pay for out of your paycheck, even if you choose not to eat it. These "family meals" are also cheap scraps that they throw together that cost the restaurant virtually nothing, so corporate actually profits off of these meals. Yet another example of them exploiting their workers. -They will dangle the idea of promotion over the heads of their employees for 6-12 months, just to keep you showing up so that they can exploit you, without ever actually promoting you. I've experienced this and witnessed many employees go through this.